Hand washing sweaters and other knits may be super easy, but that doesn’t mean you know how to do it! Here, we dispel the mysteries with step-by-steps, tips, do’s and do not’s.

Your first question may be, why hand wash? The simple answer is to avoid felting. In the presence of water, many knits will felt if they are agitated, tumbled, tousled, rubbed, or otherwise treated roughly. Hand washing avoids this pitfall and also gives you more control to avoid other common washing-machine mishaps: shrinkage, misshaping, snags, and what-not. Note that lots of modern machines have gentle cycles designed to mimic the care of actual hand washing. If you want to go that route, we recommend testing the cycle with your gauge swatch before you go ahead with the actual finished piece.

In the end, we tend to stick with hand washing. It seems to us the safest way to treat the things we care about. Plus, we welcome any opportunity to commune with fiber! And machine or hand wash, we keep our knits safe by using our rinse-free Sweater Soap, a very gentle, kind-to-your-fibers soap, made of plant-based saponified oils… Perfect!

Click To See Video Transcript

Hi, this is Laura from Purl Soho, and I’m going to show y’all how we like to hand wash our sweaters or other knits for that matter. You will need a sink or basin, large enough for whatever it is you’re washing and some rinse-free wool soap. We have here Purl Soho Sweater Soap. We’re going to use a tablespoon and at least two clean dry towels. I like to have three, maybe even four if you’re washing something very big. Okay, let’s jump in. 

Okay. As you can see, I have water in my basin. This is about one gallon of tepid water. Our sweater soap recommends one tablespoon of soap per gallon. So here we go. Okay, so I want to make sure this soap fully dissolves in the water. Whoa, going crazy here. Got a tidal pool. All right, it’s looking dissolved to me. 

Next, you’re going to place your knits or sweater into the basin. So here we go. I placed it in. Now you’re going to need to nudge it along a bit and encourage it to be submerged. So I’m going to just add some gentle pressure here. Get all these bits underwater. Okay? And of course, always remember to not agitate your knit when it’s wet. That’s how you cause felting. But now that it’s fully submerged, I’m going to walk away for 15 minutes. Now, I’m going to let it soak for 15 minutes because I want to make sure that the sweater fully absorbs the soapy water. If you have a particularly dirty piece of knitwear, feel free to leave it for longer than 15 minutes. Okay, see you in a minute or 15 minutes. 

Alright, it’s been 15 minutes, and as you can see, I have drained my basin. Now, when you’re draining your basin, if you notice that your sweater or knitwear is still quite dirty, feel free to fill the basin back up with tepid water and let it soak in there without soap, and then drain it again. And you can kind of do this cycle as many times as you feel necessary. And then as you can see, after you drain your basin, your sweater is still going to be quite damp. 

So my next step is to expel some of this excess water. I’m going to bundle up the sweater a little bit, and the reason I’m doing that is that when I remove the sweater from the basin, I want to make sure to not pick it up by the shoulders or accidentally pull a sleeve when knitwear is this wet. It really needs to be handled kind of gently to prevent felting, but also to prevent any strange stretching out. So I’m making a little bundle here. I’m going to just kind of fold it over like that. I’m also doing this because it makes it easier for my next step. So I’m going to pull this out of the basin a little bit. All right, and now I’m going to just gently squeeze. I’m not twisting, I’m not ringing. I don’t want to do anything that would cause felting. I know I keep bringing that up, but I think that’s a big point people worry about when they’re hand-washing sweaters. So, okay, I feel like I have gotten that excess water out. And next step is to lay this flat to dry. Let’s move on to that. 

Okay, I have transferred this little bundle of a sweater over here onto this nice clean dry towel, which is laid out on a nice flat surface. I’m going to unroll this little sweater here. There we go. And now I’m going to roll this up in the towel. Now while I’m doing this, a fun little tidbit. If you are washing your knitwear in a machine on a general or delicate cycle or whatnot, you can still use all of these drying steps for the drying part of your washing a sweater. 

Okay, so here we have a nice roll the sweater’s in there, and the next step is to apply weight. And again, this is to try to help remove any excess water. Now I’m going to just press really hard. I have very fond memories of watching my grandmother walk up and down rolls of towels like a balancing beam. My colleague Whitney, loves to use her knees. Since we are on this video, I’m just pushing with my hands. Feel free to rotate your little bundle and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Again, don’t wring it. Don’t twist it. Just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Okay, so after you’ve lost breath doing that, it is time to unroll this towel. And then we are going to transfer it onto another spare dry towel for the final step. So let’s do that. 

Okay, so don’t be fooled. This is a nice dry towel. It’s not the same soggy one. I swapped them out and once again, I am going to lay out this sweater here, unfold it completely. And this is the final step. We just want to lay this piece out and then let it sit and air dry. When you’re laying it out, you can take the opportunity to kind of, maybe it got stretched out while you were wearing it, or maybe there’s the fabric’s twisting or something. And this is a good opportunity kind of zhuzh it back into shape exactly how you want it so that when it’s done drying, it’s good as new. So yeah, it can take quite a bit of time for a sweater to dry. So I’m going to leave it at that. That’s how we like to hand wash our sweaters.

Rather read? Here’s our How To Hand Wash A Sweater Tutorial written out…

How To Hand Wash A Sweater: Materials

  • Purl Soho’s Sweater Soap
  • A basin or sink (large enough to hold the piece you are washing)
  • A tablespoon (or your best guess-t-imation)
  • 2 clean towels (if you are washing a large piece you may need more)

Hand Wash

  1. Fill a basin or sink with enough tepid water to completely submerge your sweater.
  2. Add soap and swirl until the soap is completely dissolved. For our Sweater Soap we recommend using approximately 1 tablespoon of soap for every gallon of water. This ratio does not need to be exact, just be sure that the water does not feel too soapy.
  3. Place the sweater in the basin, pushing it down into the water until it is fully submerged.
  4. Let the sweater sit for at least 15 minutes in order to completely absorb the water. For chunky or particularly dirty pieces, allow them to soak for longer.
  5. Drain the basin or sink. If your piece still seems dirty or if you didn’t use rinse-free soap, refill the basin with tepid water, this time without soap. Be sure not to pour the water directly onto your knit (even that amount of agitation can cause felting!). Soak the piece again. You can repeat this step as many times as necessary.
  6. Carefully fold the sweater into a bundle and gently squeeze out excess water. Be careful not to twist, wring, stretch, pinch, or pull the sweater in order to avoid felting and misshaping.

Dry

  1. Lay a clean dry towel out on a flat surface.
  2. Being careful to keep the sweater in its bundle as you transport it, lay the sweater flat on top of the towel.
  3. Roll the sweater in the towel.
  4. Add weight to the roll so the towel can absorb the excess water in the sweater. You can apply firm pressure here (walking or kneeling on the roll works!), but still be careful not to twist or wring the rolled up towel and sweater.
  5. Unroll the towel and sweater.
  6. Lay out another clean, dry towel, making sure there are no bumps or creases in the towel.
  7. Gently transfer the sweater to the dry towel and lay it out flat. Carefully shape the sweater so it looks tidy and is the size and shape you want it to be.
  8. Let the sweater air dry completely. Depending on the thickness of your knit and the weather, this can take quite a long time. Try to leave it alone so your knit can maintain its shape while it dries.
  9. You did it! Your hand knit is now clean and fresh and may even feel like it’s got a bit of a new life. Best of all, you never have to be afraid of hand washing again!
How To Hand Wash A Sweater | Purl Soho

Be sure to check out our detergent-free, rinse-free, beautifully scented Sweater Soap and all of our other tools and notions for fabric care.

Looking for more inspiration? Explore all of our free knitting patterns and knitting tutorials, buy one of our many knitting kits and yarn bundles, and shop for beautiful yarn. We have over 35 gorgeous natural fiber yarns in 100’s of magnificent colors, designed to bring integrity, beauty, and joy to your next knitting project and only available at Purl Soho!